


your name on this bullet in my chest

by liminal



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Family, Family Drama, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 18:04:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2238375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liminal/pseuds/liminal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What James doesn’t tell his parents is that Al, who never cries, cried; that he comforted his little brother when Al kept whispering, “But he promised, he promised”."</p><p>-</p><p>"With this bullet lodged in my chest, covered with your name, I will turn myself into a gun, because<br/>it’s all I have,<br/>because I’m hungry and hollow and just want something to call my own."</p><p>Richard Siken, <i>Wishbone</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	your name on this bullet in my chest

**Author's Note:**

> "With this bullet lodged in my chest, covered with your name, I will turn myself into a gun, because  
> it’s all I have,  
> because I’m hungry and hollow and just want something to call my own. I’ll be your slaughterhouse, your killing floor, your morgue and final resting, walking around with this  
> bullet inside me  
> ‘cause I couldn’t make you love me and I’m tired of pulling your teeth"
> 
> Richard Siken, _Wishbone_

By the end of September, it’s still radio silence from Al and James is forced to play sibling-in-the-middle. Hardly a coveted role, but family’s family and for all the grief he gave his brother, James feels a tad responsible for him in his hour (month? Year?) of need. Not that he’d admit that publicly, though. More importantly, the Chocolate Frogs that his parents send for him to share with Al remain in his sole custody. It’s a tough job, but someone has to make sure they don’t come to any unnecessary harm. 

_… Thanks for sending along my Christmas jumper, Mum. It’s not like I left it at home on purpose or anything. But I see where you’re coming from - Merlin forbid I forget my name and start thinking it’s Bames or Eames and Zames. Actually, Zames is cool, I think you missed a trick there. But yeah, Al’s fine, I think. Obviously it’s not like I see him much, but the last time I did he still had 10 fingers and 4 eyes, so no physical damage yet. Scientific observations will continue aboard the U.S.S. Hogwarts._

_Tell Lils we all say hi and we promise she’s not missing out on anything special. Nothing like renegade kitchen trips or water bombing the McLaggens. Gits._

_Love,_

_James_

As James sees it, what happens at Hogwarts stays at Hogwarts. That nagging part of his conscience reminds him that liars never prosper or whatever that Muggle saying is, but it’s a question of the greater good. They’re all best served by James’ vagueness regarding his brother’s state, and once he starts promising that all’s well, it’s hard to kick the habit. So James’ letters promise his parents that he’s fine, Al’s fine, Al’s functioning like a normal magical eleven-year-old. Occasionally he underlines ‘fine’ so his parents get the picture, venting his frustration as the quill nib rips through the parchment. 

His parents, however, just won't give up that easily, hence the string of questions in every letter James gets from home. It gets to the point where Ginny starts nagging Ron and George and Percy and Bill to ask after Al in their letters to their own children. Said letters all come back with similar replies. Al’s fine. _Fine. Fine. **Fine, for the last time of asking, Dad! Either ask Vic or tell Aunt Ginny to ask Ted about it, Al probably writes to him even if he won’t write to her.**_

But ‘fine’, parents quickly discover, is a word that says lots without saying anything at all. As such, the number of replies that mention the word don’t exactly reassure Harry and Ginny. Teddy’s sure that Al is fine, too, which is equally irritating. Teddy, as far as the Potter-Weasley parents are concerned, knows the truth about everything when it comes to their offspring. So, the questions and letters continue, and the answers remain the same. None of the cousins mention how little Al eats at mealtimes or how tired he looks. They’re lucky that Professor Longbottom’s memory hasn’t improved much since childhood and that he knows a little about how Al must be feeling right now, or his letters to his old friends would’ve blown their version of events right out of the water. 

The cousins, though, are having trouble with ‘fine’, too. One day, Al punches a Third Year, a smarmy cretin of a boy who thought it’d be fun to ask Al if his Daddy was proud of him, if he was still welcome back at home for the holidays. Collectively, they can’t decide if they’re proud of Al- because it was a damn good punch and, if there’s one thing they’ve all learned to do at Hogwarts, it’s to not take crap from anyone- or if they’re disappointed, because they’re only three weeks into term and only Teddy and James got their first detentions faster than that.

So all of them- James, Dom, Fred, Molly and Rose- trek up to the Deputy Headmaster’s office and beg Professor Longbottom not to send a letter home. Because Al’s fine, he really is. If anything, Jack Ferris should be picking on people his own size; and anyway, Al’s fine, it won’t happen again. 

Neville doesn’t write to the Potters. Not because he forgets, though he it does slip his mind and by the time he remembers that he should say something, the letter would be out of date. Partly, it's because he knows all about feeling like you're in the wrong House. But most of all, Neville knows that these things sort themselves out. He, after all, ended up being just fine.

Molly, as she’s prone to doing, checks in the library for precedents of students switching Houses. It was a long shot anyway, but everyone’s heart is a little heavier when she reports back to them. 

Meanwhile, Ginny gets more anxious, James a little more short-tempered in his replies and Harry infinitely sadder. At night his youngest son’s face is painted on the back of his eyelids in hues of purple and blue; and during the day, his son’s anxious questions play in his mind as his mug of coffee grows cold. James mentions that Al’s really taken to Quidditch, though that was never in question. Apparently he’s been put down as a reserve for one of the Beaters, not that you’d guess it from his wiry frame. When he, the August-born baby, makes the team for the second match, he’s younger than Harry was when he got his first start. 

What James doesn’t tell his parents is that he found Al still sitting in the Quidditch stadium one evening after practice. That Al, who never cries, cried. That he comforted his little brother when Al kept whispering, “but he promised.”

Rose doesn’t tell her mum that Al, although he’s irritatingly top in Transfiguration and Charms and Potions, hates Defence and refuses to acknowledge anyone who calls him ‘Albus’ or ‘Potter’. He answers to 'Al' or when someone says ‘hey’ to him, and sometimes when one of the older teachers sends a ‘boy’ his way. She doesn’t mention that he’s already found three of the secret passageways out of the castle, without the Marauders Map, or that he’s lost House Points for being out of bed past curfew.

Because Al’s fine, as far as the parents need to know. 

*

Hallowe’en is a turning point. A 180 degrees turn, a complete about-face. The kid holds himself a little straighter, keeps eye contact when he talks, doesn’t look so pale. He loads his plate high with food at the Feast, eats lunch most days with a motley group of people from different Houses, starts laughing and stops losing House Points. He masterminds an escape from Professor Sinistra on one of the weekly kitchen raids that the cousins carry out, now that he’s decided he wants to be a part of. He looks and sounds fine. Just fine. Aside from the glasses. He broke those a couple of weeks ago. Won’t repair them, won’t replace them. Madame Pomfrey, who swears on a termly basis that this school year is her last, spends hours one weekend fixing his eyesight and he doesn’t look much like Albus Potter when she’s finished. 

He looks like Al, whoever Al is now.

*

In between writing placating letters to his folks and staring at Fiona Cartwright and devising new ways with Freddie to irritate the McLaggens, James contemplates the enigma before him. 

Albus is the boy who ended August expecting to eat, livd, sleep, breathe red and gold; Al is the boy who ends October at home amidst the emerald gloss and metallic taste of the dungeons, drinking in their silver brightness. Al is a little leaner, a little more brazen, a little sharper round the edges than the Albus of yester-year. Al is not Albus, who spent eleven years shrinking behind grown-ups as his surname was bandied about. He is the boy who has learned, in a few months, to lift his chin up above the whispers that cling to him like Velcro and waft in front of him like curls of cigarette smoke in moonlit air. 

But Al, James finds out, is science where Albus was faith, and there’s something colder about the boy now.

*

Harry comes to the castle in mid-November as part of the lecture/practical series that the Headmistress roped him into doing a long time ago. He’s teaching Third Years to repel Boggarts and doing it exactly as Remus did: wandless incantation first, queue for the wardrobe and let them take it in turns. He’s a little surprised when Jack Ferris doesn’t shove himself to the front of the queue and insist that he tackle the Boggart first as he used to do in class demonstrations, when instead the boy lurks at the back of the hall and refuses to make eye contact with him, but Harry wonders if he’s simply not changing for the better. Perhaps the boy's behaviour is simply down to being thirteen and in the first throws of adolescence, though Harry knows he isn't really the right person to comment on that. Thirteen for him didn’t mean an awkwardly breaking voice, a first crush, stress over essays. For him, thirteen meant Dementors and a prophecy and the beginnings of a family he never knew he had. Jack Ferris, thankfully, is to be spared all of that. 

He eats in the Great Hall that night, putting a straight face on when the whispers reach his ears and the nudges between students become too obvious. He studiously ignores the majority of his assembled family, who studiously ignore him, but when he’s not doing that, he’s searching hungrily for his youngest son, who simply isn’t there. There’s no one at the Slytherin table who matches Albus’ description, though his eyes twice come back to someone he assumes to be a Second Year: a slight boy with a lean face and dark brown hair, who has an odd air of weariness abut him. Harry’s fairly sure that he’s got blue eyes, but his own eyesight isn’t as good as it once was. Age is taunting him, but he laughs a lot to keep himself young and his hair is as black as it ever was. He’s still recognisably Harry Potter, to the occasional chagrin of his eldest son.

Tracking Albus down is a simple matter of taking the Marauders’ Map off James and Fred for the night, though they’re none too pleased that their kitchen exploits will be delayed. All Harry does is follow the labelled dot through the corridors after curfew and down towards the Quidditch Pitch, and he begins to understand why the Slytherin hourglass is so lacking in emeralds. The new caretaker pops up in an adjacent corridor on the Map, making his own way to the Quidditch Pitch and clearly continuing a cat-and-mouse game that has been going on for months. Harry changes direction, pops up behind the man and gently persuades him to go back to his rooms, to let this evening’s misdemeanour slide. The man, who seems built in much the same vein as Filch was, grumbles about the perks of celebrity, but turns around and does as he was bid.

Harry continues alone.

The cold night air is bracing, but what he thought was the rustle of wind turns out to be the sound of flight as he climbs the stands at the darkest end of the pitch. It amazes him, really, how far the wizarding world has pushed itself. His Nimbus 2000 had been fast, his Firebolt faster still, but he has trouble even making out the flying figure and that can’t all be due to the darkness of the evening.

He sits still for what feels like an eternity, waiting for the boy's eventual descent as his hands and ears grow steadily more numb. The wooden stands creak near him and Harry whips around, muscle memory dictating as his hand flies to his wand, to find a boy standing six feet from him.

“Blimey, Al, you scared me,” Harry admits, hand on his heart through his cloak and a rueful smile spreading over his face.

He gets no answer.

“I couldn’t see much, but what I could see looks good. You’re a natural at night flying,” Harry says easily and he holds a wool-wrapped arm out. “Don’t I get a hug? I haven’t seen you for a while.”

Al stands still, makes no effort to move closer, and Harry’s arm falls slowly to his side as he takes in the prevailing mood. “What’s wrong,” he asks, but Al says nothing and he turns to walk back in the direction of the castle.

Fine. They’d all said ‘fine’. They’d all promised that Al was fine, that he was doing fine in lessons and doing fine in Quidditch and was all together just fine. As he follows his son into the darkness, Harry tries to decide whether he wants to strangle James or Teddy first. Because his boy is quite clearly the furthest thing from fine. He’s averaging As in Transfiguration and Charms and Potions, but he’s only shown up to four Defence lessons in the whole term and the number of reports of Al punching an older kid reminds Harry of his father and Sirius’ detention records. Yes, Al’s fine, if ‘fine’ has become one of those irritating words in the English language like ‘chuffed’ and ‘egregious’, where each definition means the opposite of the other. _‘Fine’, Merlin’s ass_ is Harry’s prevailing thought.

*

The entrance hall light throws shadows onto the pavement slabs outside, and Harry sees people he’d rather weren’t there. “You should all be in bed,” he says with his best attempt at geniality, but he was never much of an actor, and his family doesn't buy it for one second.

“Let me talk to Al, please,” he tries again, a little more firmly this time, but the human wall refuses to budge,and Harry is so ridiculously reminded of the DA that he has to bite back a thoroughly inappropriate smile.

“I’m not really asking,” he says, firmer still, and Dom glares at him.

“And we’re not moving,” she replies tersely and everyone, even James, who’s hidden at the back, nods.

“Don’t make me start asking you all why you lied to Ginny and me, because that is not a conversation that is going to end well for any of you.”

“Well, this one isn’t going to end well for you-“

“Dominique, watch your tongue-“

“Al really doesn’t want to see you,” James says softly from the back, cutting through a war of words slowly bubbling up between his father and his cousin. He looks a little paler, a little thinner, a little darker under his eyes; and as Harry looks closer, he sees that they all do. 

He tries a softer approach again, drops the harshness from his words. “Look, I know this can’t have been easy on any of you, but I know how Al’s feeling right now and-“

“No, you don’t, so please don’t pretend that you do.” A new voice cuts straight through the hostility of the moment, sending Harry back to family dinners and garden Quidditch, first steps and first words.

Al steps out from around the pillar to stand behind his family. Harry starts when he sees it’s the same boy he noticed at dinner and the word ‘fine’ rings in his ears. Fine fine fine fine fine.

“What happened to your glasses,” is the first thing he says, noticing their absence for the first time. The change to his son's appearance isn't huge, but unsettling nonetheless. Those green eyes are more prominent now in the small face in front of him, a face that is remarkably lean and contoured for a young eleven year old. And the hair… Not so black anymore, less unmanageable than before, not the spit of his father or grandfather’s anymore…

“They broke.”

“Couldn’t you fix them?”

“I didn’t want to. Madame Pomfrey helped me.”

“You could’ve let us know.”

“I didn’t want to.”

The human wall looks a little less concrete than it did before, but the guard remains up: arms crossed, shoulders squared, eyes both sorry and sad.

“Look, let’s just go and talk somewhere, just us. Come on, Al,” Harry wheedles softly but his son’s eyes flash dangerously and his grip on his broomstick tightens so his knuckles whiten and his tendons flare. _Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus_ and Harry has just stepped on an asp.

“I don’t want to,” Al all but shouts and even Dom looks surprised at this escalation. They never imagined this. ‘Fine’, they promised, and it was fine, when this was all contained, when the truth could be avoided and adults didn't creep up on their carefully constructed charade.

“Why not?”

“Because,” and Harry can tell that tears and words are about to come pouring out, “because you promised me it would all be ok and the Hat would let me choose and Slytherin would be glad to have me and you didn’t mind where I ended up, and you didn’t tell me that everyone would whisper about me when they thought I couldn’t hear or that the Hat just says what it thinks and doesn’t let you argue with it or that no one would clap like they do with everyone else or that being a Potter and having such a stupid name is horrible or that half the people in my Common Room don’t think I should be there or that- or that you do mind which House I got, because otherwise you wouldn’t be writing to everybody the whole time checking up on me and asking if I was ok. Because you know, and you knew on the platform, that being in Slytherin is the worst thing for us. And you knew all of this and you lied to me and I hate you!”

In the moments after the outburst, when James swallows a lot and Dom looks up at the ceiling so she won’t start crying too, Harry doesn’t think he’s ever felt more alone. Footsteps behind him turn out to be Neville, who stands by his side and whispers, “it’ll work out”.

It takes a while, but eventually Harry trusts his voice not to waver too much.

“You’ve grown up quickly,” he says in a sad little voice that’s somewhere between a whisper and an apology, and he hasn’t been this glad to know Neville’s got his back, figuratively and physically, in twenty years.

“Because you babied me for too long,” Al says in an angry little voice that’s somewhere between a sob and an apology, and Harry's little boy turns and runs down the hallway as fast as he possibly can.

*

It’s difficult and the replies still say ‘fine’, but 'fine' becomes a code for Harry, a way to stay attached to a boy who wants to break free all together. One or two ‘fine’s in a letter means Al’s not doing too badly, that he’s still averaging As and is going to more Defence classes and is fast becoming Slytherin’s best Beater in living memory. When those ‘fine’s come from Dom, Harry goes into the office in a good mood. She’s got a sharp tongue on her and a certain disregard for her uncle that means he takes her at her word. Three or four ‘fine’s means an off-week where Al maybe didn’t show up for three meals everyday and skipped the weekly kitchen raid, or where Slytherin lost a match by the narrowest of margins and Al finds solace sitting in a shower. Any more ‘fine’s and Harry sends a package to James with Chocolate Frogs and Fizzing Whizzbees and a handful of Galleons, and James knows to split the contents with his brother, though Harry turns a blind eye to what he’s sure is a 60/40 split.

Letters from Neville, when the increasingly busy Deputy Head remembers or has time to write, help, too. If anyone has come through a similar experience, it’s the chubby kid who became a war hero.

Al answers to ‘Potter'. In practical terms he always did, because even he didn’t expect teachers to call him by a nickname, but on most days he’s less inclined to glare nastily at whoever throws it his way. ‘Albus’ remains a no-go area and Merlin help anyone who tries ‘Severus’ on for size. He goes to Defence lessons when he can be bothered, and is both bemused and irritated by his predisposition towards the subject, though he is predictably absent from any practical demonstrations that Harry comes in to run. 

Harry lets his son worm his way out of trouble with the Muggle police when he chooses drugs as his newest adrenaline outlet at fifteen, but he destroys all the tablets he can find and writes him a note, promising him a new camera for Christmas if he kicks the habit. He says he’ll even let Al choose it, though he’s not surprised when his son chooses the most expensive one in the shop. He suggests once, when he finds his son looking at one of the employment leaflets he remembers looking through with Hermione, that he consider a Ministry career and never mentions it again, but his smile is wider when he sees all his children in the audience at the Ministry's twenty-fifth anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts.

There’s a little give and there’s more take, and Al won't promise that his dark brown hair is entirely natural. More than that is the reality that the father-son bond, made so much stronger by the myriad similarities between to two, will never be the same again. But what grows is the knowledge that glasses and hair colour aren't all that bind the two together. And when England win back-to-back World Cups in 2024 and 2028 and Harry talks his way into the deserted dressing room at the end of the day, holding the official programme full of Al’s own photography, and he asks his son how he’s doing, Al says he’s “fine. Fine. I’m fine. Really, really fine.” At which point, code be damned because Al’s sitting there in his England kit, gold medal round his neck and he stands to turn his dad’s hand-on-the-shoulder into their first proper hug in twenty-two years. 

And they’re both just fine.


End file.
